


Guiding Light

by Twelve (Dodici)



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Ghosts, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Mention of Death, Post-Canon, Zoldyck A+ parenting style mentioned, actually the romantic tension is over nine thousand, as in Whale Island lore bc that's the hill i want to die on, author is significantly less sleep deprived than Killua but still in a tight spot, found family trope of doom, whale island, you could read it as friendship but Togashi would be disappointed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-16
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-25 00:00:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30080340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dodici/pseuds/Twelve
Summary: According to anyone but him, Killua is in desperate need of a vacation. Whale Island has it all: sunny beaches, good food, and a creepy abandoned lighthouse that may or may not be haunted.(Also Gon lives there, and if you’re called Killua Zoldyck that’s more than enough)
Relationships: Gon Freecs/Killua Zoldyck
Comments: 10
Kudos: 25





	Guiding Light

**Author's Note:**

> /looks at calendar//looks at camera/ ... well, time is but a human convention, right?  
> I wrote this thing in three days of madness back in August, but given that we're virtually still in March 2020, i don't feel like it's been too long XD  
> Anywho, many thanks to [chubsthehamster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chubsthehamster/profile), my favorite rodent friend and beta, that has once again been willing to wrestle with my misuse of the English language <3

The sea lights up and freezes still for a fraction of a second; then a white dome bulges high as a hill before exploding in a fountain, water raining back on them.

Ikalgo’s tentacles are all wrapped around Killua’s shoulders as he tries to stand as tall as possible.

“Thirty meters at least,” he says. Difficult to assess with the rubber boat swinging like crazy under Killua’s own feet, but it might be accurate. He tries to clean the binocular with the hanging sleeve of his wetsuit, but of course it’s still wet.

Palm hands him the handkerchief she was using to dry their paperwork.

“Don’t get this excited, Ikalgo. How many explosions have you seen in the past three months?”

“Thirty meters!” Ikalgo insists, yelling inside Killua’s ear.

Palm hums, unfazed, and marks their log with one of Alluka’s glitter pens.

“And this was our last detonation. It’s been fun, hasn’t it?”

Killua stretches his arm up, spine popping like firecrackers. Ikalgo slides back down inside the rubber boat with a soft, squishing sound of unplugged suckers.

The bomb scared all the seagulls, and the sky is a blazing blue, summer just around the corner . Killua sits down and yawns—honest to God, half the ocean might be stuck inside his ears at this point. He’s pretty ready for a full week of sleep and nothing more strenuous than tucking Alluka in.

Ikalgo’s big round head comes looming from above, eyes serious and waiting. Killua rolls his own, and smiles.

“Yeah, pretty fun.”

Of course the darn octopus would _cry_.

“Group hug!” he yells, and jumps right on his face.

Can it be called a group hug if Killua is just lying on the floor and the rest of the group is eight tentacles and Palm’s right foot?

*

As fast as his phone loads up the page, Killua has already charged up Godspeed and broken into their apartment.

Alluka raises her chin from a history book and sighs as fast as she meets Killua’s eyes. Half an hour later, Ikalgo is driving them to the airport.

“I can’t believe you won’t stay for dinner,” Ikalgo says, and Palm pinches him on the closest tentacle. She turns on the seat to smile at them both.

“We’ll clean up after you, it will be like you’ve never been here in the first place. Just have a safe trip and don’t worry.”

Killua recognizes the scratchy tangle inside his chest as extreme worry, but he nods. At least Alluka is smiling under the crocheted shark hat the landlady insisted on giving her as a parting gift. She’s the only person they managed to say goodbye before fleeing.

Out of the car, Alluka hugs Palm’s knees and Ikalgo’s head in one go because then their airship is ready to go. Killua almost thanks them, before Ikalgo fixes his eyes on him, serious, and Palm rolls her eyes.

Maybe it’s just his ridiculous brain, but when the airship takes off, Killua is sure there’s still two dots, purple and red, down on the ground to watch them depart.

Nothing left to do but get comfortable and try not to die, the usual.

Alluka is scrolling at her phone, eyebrows scrunched.

“To be honest, your names aren’t anywhere, all the article talks about is the submarine and the Association—”

“Read further, it said that the employed Hunters were involved with the chimera ant thing, they could as well just’ve written our fucking surnames,” Killua rebuts. Should he change his phone _again_? He knows all the relevant numbers by heart, of course, but still—he told Gon he would call him tonight. “Yeah, but Mister Morel is a sea Hunter, right? So he’s the one who—”

“Like I want for Illumi to go and bother Morel. No, better to—”

“Disappear,” Alluka says. She’s frowning at the misty color outside the window as they fly up above the clouds.

Killua hates this. And himself.

“I’m sorry. I know you would have liked to finish your school stuff before…”

“I’m not worried about school, Brother!” Her eyes soften, she leaves her purse and jumps to sit beside him. “It’s just a bit stressful and I would have liked to say a proper goodbye, that’s all. But it’s going to be fine… Oh, look, the serving cart is coming, let’s get chocolate!”

Killua buys her chocolate and orange juice too because vitamins and hydration are important both for hormone therapy and general growing up. Something like that.

He gets himself a coffee with loads of sugar instead, because he needs to stay alert—and that settles it, it seems.

*

A roundhouse kick and then—jump, flying punches. Uh, combo.

Gon’s life bar is cut in half and Killua grins. He scoots a bit closer to the headboard, Alluka’s head resting down near his side.

She mumbles something in her sleep but doesn’t move. Killua tries the combo again, thumbs flying on the controller. He squints in the dark—he had to dim the screen light because he didn’t want to bother Alluka.

Gon’s character comes back with a punch and—

“No way!”

He clasps one hand on his mouth; Alluka doesn’t stir, but the Gametendo falls on his belly and that’s all the distraction Gon needs to cast some kind of deadly special-attack. Killua watches his life bar fall to zero and sighs, heads sinking back on the pillow.

_Resume game?_

Killua is—tired. They’re three weeks of random routes away from any soul who might’ve seen them recently. They changed passwords and phones—Alluka’s school sent new credentials just the other day.

They’re safe. They’re fine. And every time Killua tries to close his eyes for more than twenty minutes his whole system reboots to launch his brain on full alert.

He should be grateful—thanks, overbearing amount of torture—it’s such a useful mechanism. He’s a hypervigilant mess at this point, but at least he shouldn’t start hallucinating before the eleventh day of wakefulness. Or was that the plot of _Invasion of the Body Snatchers_? Whatever. He’s fine. Everything’s fine.

He breathes cold air and shivers. Alluka is still all tucked in, the crown of her head the only visible part of her body.

Killua places the Gametendo on the nightstand without even looking and gets back to grab his phone. His thumb is a bit sweaty, and it leaves a smear on the screen as he opens the first conversation on Squabble.

Gon _is writing_.

> ahah won

> ahah what, you dumbass. i let you win.

> this is just sad, killua!! admit I beat you

Killua looks at the stupid gif loading up. He can feel the smile pinching at his cheeks and the weight of his own head, of his limbs…

> right right. Congrats on ur winning. Im going to sleep now

> yeah mito came to yell at me bc my pause expired thirty minutes ago

Sad emoji. Gon has the same mastery of emojis Leorio has: they’re both secretly old men.

Gon is still _writing_.

> what's the time there? didn’t mean to keep you up!!

Killua raises his gaze from the screen; the hotel room is steeped in swarming darkness, Alluka’s breath is the only sound. Killua shifts his feet on the mattress, feeling tired and restless and useless.

> don’t worry about it. have fun with math!

> mean!!

Sad emoji again. Killua sighs, and sets the alarm—Alluka’s last exam is in less than three hours. He’d like to fetch her breakfast before she starts sweating in front of their laptop screen.

He’d like to get a couple hours of sleep too, that would be cool.

He breathes in the dark, eyes closed. There’s a sound, a rush inside his head—did he close the door? Hell, he can’t remember. He turns in the general direction and there’s something standing tall right there, something lean, long limbs, long hair—Killua springs up and lands on two feet, Godspeed lighting up the room, and Alluka’s parka hanging limp on the coat rack.

Killua gapes. His heart is being electrocuted. He swallows, teeth gritted.

“Brother?”

Fuck.

“Ah, sorry, there was a—a mosquito.”

Alluka frowns, eyes still closed.

“Switch the light off, would ya?”

Killua looks at his own glowing hands.

“Yeah. Sure. I just—”

Her breath deepens; she’s back asleep.

Killua slips out of the window to go discharge some lightning before he fries himself.

*

If Killua had any energy left to do anything more strenuous than keeping his own eyelids open, he would have screamed.

“What does this even mean, we said—I didn’t say—”

“It’s been a while, brother! I thought you’d be happy!”

Alluka is packing up their stuff, hers and Nanika’s and Killua’s too.

Killua’s brain is failing to connect.

“So what, you’ve set this up with Gon without telling me—”

Alluka chooses two tiny slices of watermelon as her earrings and smiles in the mirror.

“What do you think? Oh, don’t be like that!”

Killua doesn’t know how he’s being—he’s just sitting on the bed, trying to keep his head straight, which is proving to be extremely difficult since apparently they’re going to meet Gon in less than three days and straight just isn’t who Killua is, especially when he’s in Gon’s proximity.

He scrubs both hands on his face. His eyelids feel like sandpaper.

“I’ll ask this again. Not even one minute after your exam, you’ve asked—”

“I asked Miss Mito. And it was before my exam, when we were still in Kukan’yu… Do you think the marks are already out? Jeez, I’m nervous…”

“Alluka!”

“What,” she says, eyes fixed on her phone. Of course she already had the school registry open.

“What does it mean you asked Mito? What is this—why are we going on Whale Island all of the sudden!”

She slips the phone back inside her purse and sighs. Killua has no idea where she got all these theatrics from.

Alluka steps toward him and hugs him hard, cradling his head to her chest, and for a second Killua’s brain finally—finally—gives in and shuts down. Of course next externalization would be a brain-fart.

“Are you wearing a bra?”

“Don’t change subject,” Alluka says, but she’s grinning. She places both palms around Killua’s cheeks when he looks at her from below. “I just thought it would have been nice to go back on Whale Island and relax for a bit, since we’re both officially on vacation now.”

Killua’s brain is a limp eel that sparks random bursts of electricity at this point.

“I guess,” he says. And frowns. “Okay then, let’s go on Whale Island.”

Alluka hugs him a bit harder.

*

So, insomnia gives you lots of time to consider your life and Killua’s spent the last seventy-two hours applying himself to the task, while the world kept on sliding behind windows as airships, trains and ferries carried them toward Whale Island.

He was lenient, on himself mostly. He just let himself have fun—Hunter’s stuff instead of being Killua fucking Zoldyck stuff, and of course as fast as he lets his guard down there were stupid articles about the crew’s findings in the local newspaper and that stupid scientific magazine and now everybody and their dog could easily know where Killua was.

Everybody and Milluki, mostly, but Killua has long lost any hope of having even a grudging ally in that household—did Milluki know about the fucking needle? Milluki sure as hell knew about Nanika.

She’s out in the sun behind a pair of extremely large heart-shaped sunglasses. She’s pointing at the seagulls, sitting on the railing even if Killua experiences something close to a stroke every time the ship sways—he might have set a whirlwind to react so that she doesn’t fall.

And of course Nanika doesn’t fall—she yelps, and points as fast as she catches sight of Whale Island, far away where its soft, greenish shape carves itself in shades of blue.

For a moment, Killua lets it lull him—the warmth of a sun ever so bright, the ocean glinting like it’s full of jewels, the horizon stretching his vision as open as Gon’s voice had built up adventures, past and future, more promising than anything Killua had ever known before.

The house on the cliff smells of creaking wood and salt as usual. Cake is unexpected but much appreciated. It’s chocolate; Killua munches on it feeling like he’s maneuvering his own hands from a cockpit; he hits his tea with an elbow and Gon grabs the mug before it slides past the edge of the table. Apparently, being awake is a videogame Killua sucks at—duly noted.

“Sorry,” he says, and Gon smiles his encouraging, open, warm smile. Killua could cry right then and there, but he doesn’t because he’s not overwhelmed. His brain isn’t trying to escape from his nostrils and he isn’t on edge _at all_.

“Don’t worry Killua, you have no idea how many cups Gon has broken in his life,” Mito tells him, and she’s still piling cookies on the table. “Make yourself at home. We’re so happy you came.”

“Yeah, sorry for showing up with such a short notice.”

“No way, it’s so cool that you came!” Gon is pulsing, pure light flashing from his eyes and his teeth and—maybe it’s just a migraine. Killua isn’t sure, but he basks into it nevertheless, while Alluka recounts their most recent adventures, like Gon hasn’t religiously commented on every photo of every shark and colorful fish Killua sent him in the span of the last three months.

It was just so convenient, the hunt. Morel recommended him, Ikalgo was on board and Palm tagged along, but it was ultimately Killua was the one who thought it would have been nice to get such a long job—three whole months meant that, for the first time, Alluka could start and finish a whole trimester of school staying in one place. Having one room and one desk while Killua spent his time exploring relics and make old bombs exploding without killing anybody in the process.

Ikalgo said it was nerve-wracking—but nerve-wracking is the constant, obtrusive feeling of being on the run, always, and every pit-stop longer than a week builds larger and larger cobwebs of uneasiness inside Killua’s brain, until he doesn’t know if he’s just ordinarily paranoid or a needle person was really tailing him and Alluka at the packaged food aisle inside the supermarket.

Of course he’s paranoid: that feeling of something amiss won’t leave him alone—isn’t everybody a bit too happy today? Alluka beams at Mito, who nods knowingly toward Gon, who gets back to smile at Killua like he’s trying to physically radiate shiny inner peace from those giant eyes of his.

Abe places another full teapot in the middle of the table and sighs happily.

“Yes, there’s no better place than Whale Island,” she says.

Killua looks at Gon, warm and tanned and beaming at arm’s length, and his heart agrees.

*

Apparently, ‘there’s no better place than Whale Island’ is the new mantra, because Gon wants them to enjoy it to the fullest.

“We’re going to have so much fun!” he says, and Killua does his best to keep his eyes open and nod and be involved and enthusiastic, which he actually is.

Gon sounds way more lively now than he does on the phone at any given time and Killua knows he always tries his best to sound upbeat even if he isn’t feeling it. He kinda hates it, too, because maybe Gon doesn’t really trust him with being sad. He trusts him with tired, with bored, even sometimes with angered frustration at his umpteenth attempt at making nen work—or math work, even if Killua is pretty sure he pours less than one tenth of that same energy to solve equations.

Killua is gotten better at those too, he’s actually feeling pretty much fucking scholarized what with Alluka trying to keep up with online courses all the time. 

“I won’t let Alluka jump off a cliff.” He doesn’t want to be a killjoy, but that kind of stuff is definitely off-limits these days, at least until Alluka learns to not trip on her own feet and stops being scared of escalators. She still puffs her cheeks.

“Excuse you, I won’t let myself jump off a cliff!”

Killua doesn’t say “that means I’m raising you right” for the sake of peace, but maybe Gon senses it, because his laugh is bright and strong.

“We won’t jump off cliffs. Actually, I had something quieter in mind. What about the beach?” Killua raises one eyebrow, tired eyes setting on the long, colorful wrap Gon is pulling out of the old cupboard. It smells of salt and sand, which makes perfect sense since sand is exactly what comes out of it when Gon places it down on the old wooden floor of the attic, and the light filtering from the window glimmers on the dust and the fabric to reveal a big parasol.

“What about that,” Killua asks, when Alluka is already in awe at the thing.

“I love the beach! Nanika likes to collect shells… We love the beach, right Brother?”

Killua, who’s survived at least three different degrees of sunburn while he was adventuring the sea in the last three months, opts to stay silent.

“It’s not just any beach,” Gon says, finger raised and a bunch of fluffy-looking towels folded under his arm. “It’s a super secret beach that’s hidden on this side of the whale’s tail—Whale Island’s tail,” he adds, because Killua knows he has blinked, his brain slow at processing.

“Of course. You won’t bring us on a real whale.”

Gon musters up a sheepish grin.

“That would be fun, but maybe another time!”

*

He thinks he’s dreaming the whales, but it’s actually just the clouds, flowing soft and weighty up on the ocean. Killua blinks and the sun bounces up from the sand to his eyes; keeping them open has become sensibly more difficult and it was already kind of a strenuous fight to begin with. He shakes his head.

“Sorry, what did you say?”

Gon is smiling, eyes bright. He’s placed the parasol in between rocks and sand with one strong push, brow glinting with sweat. Nanika had fun helping him patting the sand around the shaft to keep it in place.

It’s always windy on Whale Island, so now she’s gone searching for a big rock that they can bind to the parasol. Killua spots her easily with the side of his eye, the huge pink straw hat Abe gave her makes her look like a tiny parasol herself.

“I said you should put some sunblock on or you’ll die,” Gon says. He hands him the bottle.

“Isn’t that useless if we’re going to swim.”

“You want to swim?” Gon asks, dubious, and Killua is trying, really—usually he makes a point of trying really hard to understand what’s going on inside other people’s heads, and Gon’s head specifically, but at the moment his own head feels just like mushy, wet sand, the same kind that Nanika is jumping on to leave footprints on the shore, rock already forgotten.

“I think I should teach Nanika. She still doesn’t know how to, because when we went swimming it was always in more crowded places and…”

Gon’s face lights up.

“I can do that—actually, I would love to do that!”

“What love!” Nanika yells, hands up to keep the hat down.

“Do you want to swim, Nanika?”

Both her eyes and her mouth become perfect rounded black holes.

“Swim! Killua, swim!”

“Yeah,” he says. “Would you like that?”

She yelps louder than the seagulls and Gon grins, sunblock forgotten.

*

Nanika likes to play around and smile even if she still hasn’t really figured out how to move her facial muscles without looking at least a bit creepy—Killua finds it kinda charming, though.

For all that Alluka is still a kid and Killua himself doesn’t feel especially old despite the approaching seventeen-ness of his sixteen self, Nanika sure acts like the youngest. Ageless, to be precise; like she didn’t age a day from the first time black eyes appeared on Alluka’s face.

The first thing she learns after not swallowing the water is to spit it out on Killua’s face as a joke and since Gon is extremely pesky, he reinforces her by laughing and spitting too.

“You’re both impossible, I won’t play with you ever again.”

“No, Killua!” Nanika wails, and leaves the safety of Gon’s shoulder to launch herself on Killua’s own. The water is a strong pressure on his eyes, inside his ears. He blinks underwater, Nanika’s weight keeping him down, and feels a bit more awake. Thank you, underwater freezing currents.

Gon’s face pops up—down?—underwater too, looking curiously at him. They grin at each other and go under, just to spring up again by pushing on the rocky bottom.

Nanika yells when Killua picks her up like that, to throw her forward.

“Bad Killua, bad!”

“You started it!” he says, but it lasts one second before he’s thrown away too, Gon’s laugh deafening in his ear before he’s upside down underwater. He pushes himself up with a hand.

“This is war!” he yells, but it’s one he ends up losing, tackled down by both Gon and Alluka, who couldn’t stay away any longer.

*

Killua is somewhat accustomed to routines and ordinary activities by now and he doesn’t really mind. Alluka and Nanika aren’t fighters, but they can do a whole lot of other incredible, awesome things that Killua loves doing with them. They go to the movies, sometimes in languages they don’t even know; Alluka loves skating and Killua still remembers all his tricks when it comes to skateboarding. They rent bikes, they play video games and sometimes they just _exist_ —Killua has never felt more at ease, in a way that he could never be with Gon, because of all those cumbersome, complicated feelings that are still there, throbbing under his sternum every time Gon smiles or grab his hand or—

“I can do it by myself, you know?”

“No way,” Gon says, and splats another handful of sunblock in between his shoulder blades. “See, you’re red already! How is that possible, I should have given you a wetsuit—”

Gon is talking about his back, not his face. Or his ears. And, anyway, maybe it’s just sunburned there, too.

Killua scoffs.

“Sure, so that I could have used it to strangle you. Honestly, I doubt a sunburn would kill me.” His eyes linger on one of the biggest burn marks from Milluki’s cigar from back in the day. It’s round and fading; at this point it just looks like some kind of weird birthmark near the inside of his elbow.

He can feel Gon frowning even if he’s sitting behind him. His hands are so hot that the sunblock is warm already; it feels sticky on Killua’s skin and it smells sweet and coconut-y in a fake, chemical way.

Alluka is smiling right there, sitting on a towel. Killua was the one to insist on adding another layer of sunblock on her skin, since she’s basically a walking fire-hazard even under Abe’s straw hat; she took revenge by saying he would have to suffer through the same fate and then Gon—

Killua isn’t sure what Gon is thinking basically at any given time, that’s the sad truth. He loves him, in all the ways you can love a person, and at this point he isn’t even properly embarrassed over it anymore, it’s just how it is, who he is. But it’s Gon—adrenaline junkie Gon, ‘let’s tail murderous bandits’ Gon and ‘I’ll break some bones and blow up my arms just to make a point’ Gon: as much as Killua used to share idle activities with him, they were also always basically coffee breaks in the midst of life and death situations.

So what is _this_.

“I can do the front by myself!” Killua blurts.

“Sure you can, but there’s no need to waste energy or get your hands sticky, since mine already are!” Gon says, and smiles and splatters another handful of sticky stuff on Killua’s chest. “I think we should just take it easy today,” he adds, like it was something he was pondering. “The wind isn’t even howling like usual, it’s the perfect weather for a nap, don’t you think?”

Killua looks at Gon’s squared fingers, because that’s apparently the direction Gon’s growth spurt is heading, straight lines and broad shoulders, and blinks.

“I didn’t come all this way for a _nap_ ,” he says and feels instantly bad, because the frustration at his own tired brain sure sounded like general frustration and—Alluka’s eyes flashes up behind sunglasses too low on her pointy nose. Killua feels like the worst brother ever. “I mean, the four of us could do something a bit more engaging. Like, what’s up on there?”

Gon’s eyebrows rise as he squints in the sun until they too meet the glinting dome of what sure as hell isn’t an UFO but sure looks like one.

“Well, that’s the old lighthouse… it’s abandoned, though. You’ve seen the new one back over the docks—we should go visit that sometimes, the keeper loves to give tours—”

“Maybe we should visit the creepy haunted one instead? Sounds interesting,” Killua says, feeling more awake. That’s it, that’s adventurous enough to make Gon happy but not dangerous enough to put Alluka at risk.

Maybe he was thinking the same thing, because Gon’s eyes have shifted toward Alluka, who’s stepped closer to listen in.

“Well, that sounds cool!” she says. “But we came here to see the beach—”

Killua’s eyebrows twitch.

He looks to the left, where rocks encircle the sand declining in a soft curve inside the water, and on the right, where the side of the cliff is more prominent, full of crevices and knots and the oceans sputters against it in a soft lull.

“Well, we kinda saw it already—and I’m pretty sure Gon has seen it at least a million times.”

“Kind of,” Gon says and he’s so unashamed, when he looks Killua right in the eyes, sunblock bottle still in hand and face so serious. “But it’s always different when I see places with you, so I don’t really mind.”

Killua’s sleep-deprived brain isn’t suited to survive stuff like that.

“What does that even mean, you moron!”

He has the feeling he lost the argument anyway, because then Gon spreads a fingerprint of sunblock on the tip of his nose and beams.

*

For some reason, everybody seems more tired than Killua despite the fact that Killua is pretty sure he’s never been so tired in his life—that’s lie, he’s been. Only he usually had more compelling reasons than being unreasonably insomniac and jittery, as if he was constantly wired to a couple thousands volts.

“Oh, so pretty!” Alluka says, pointing at the umpteenth flower on their path. Gon lights up and takes his sweet time explaining all the extremely accurate biological assets of the flower, the way it reproduces and how it sucks that botany isn’t an actual subject at his online school because he probably would have nailed it.

“No need to rush,” he says, when Killua lets a small, tired groan out as they wait for snails to cross the pathway instead of just doing the actual normal thing and getting ahead with a step.

At least Nanika smiles really hard as she bothers one long antenna with a fingertip, giggling under the straw hat.

It’s good, all of this. Whale Island is so secluded that his sisters can switch whenever they want, allowing Nanika to enjoy the trip with her own eyes way more than she’s used to when people are around—and people are always around, because solo missions in dangerous, remote places are something that areGon’s, not Alluka’s. And now Killua’s life is something that’s more Alluka’s than Gon’s and maybe the two things are impossible to reconcile. Maybe that’s a puzzle made of tranquil beaches and creepy lighthouses and Killua’s claws and soft, tan hands that smell of sunblock—a puzzle he’ll never be able to solve, because you just can’t have it all, that’s not how the universe works.

“It really is creepy!”

Mh. Maybe a bit. Killua blinks at the sturdy profile of the lighthouse, now drawn in strong lines of red and gray against the sky.

“Don’t look directly on the highest window, they say the ghost can catch you, then.”

Killua rolls his eyes, but Alluka giggles and hums, happy as her eyes linger exactly there, up toward the highest streak of window, glass dull and opaque where it’s not broken.

“It isn’t creepier than home,” she says, and Killua snorts.

“Well, it can’t be creepier than _us_ , that’s for sure!” They laugh, bent in two.

When Killua raises his chin, Gon is looking at them—no, at him—with eyes so crystal clear the laugh dies on Killua’s lips and he’s left there gaping at Gon’s soft smile, the awkward angle on his eyebrows is happy and worried and everything in between and what should Killua even do with something like that?

“You’re not creepy, you’re awesome,” Gon says. He blinks at Killua’s blinking and turns to Alluka too. “You two are awesome. You three! But your mother is a bit creepy, right.”

Alluka starts laughing again, uncontrollable, and Killua is pretty sure it wasn’t over what Gon said.

*

The lighthouse grows on a bunch of scales made of glinting rocks; it’s a tall tree made of concrete, compact against the crumbling ocean.

“It’s three whole floors! One of the biggest lighthouses in the continent—at least that’s what people say… Cool, right?”

Killua raises one hand to shield himself from the pool of light on top of the lighthouse. Must be the sun’s reflection, but it almost looks operative from there, up on the last strip of rocky cliff, right where the sea eats into the land.

“How do we get there?” he asks. Gon gapes.

“Oh,” he says, and squints toward the ocean. “Well, I think there used to be a boardwalk… Now it’s a bit complicated, we’d need to swim for a bit and it can be dangerous with the currents. And, anyway, there’s nothing on there.” He adds it looking at Alluka. “It really is just an abandoned building. It’s pretty cool to look at the ocean from above, but the new lighthouse is just as cool and way easier to visit!”

“Sounds fun, we should go there! What do you say, Brother?”

Killua’s eyes are still attached to the old lighthouse. He’s got twenty-twenty vision even when sleep deprived, and he’s pretty sure it’s not just the sun: there’s something flickering there, like the beacon is on.

He shakes his head, the skin under his eyes feels like an egg's shell. Alluka and Gon are looking at him with unmistakable worry.

“Sure, I’m in,” he says. When they start getting back, Alluka chit-chatting about how nasty her last math exam was, Killua can’t avoid a last glance to the lighthouse until he feels his hand enveloped in warmth.

Gon’s fingers are sun-roasted sand against his. Killua blushes and lets himself be dragged, ghosts forgotten.

*

Abe’s hands are impossibly fast, wool threads that shift hypnotic from one needle to the other. She smiles at him, eyes that don’t need to look at her handiwork for it to come out perfectly symmetrical.

“It’s not poisoned,” she says, double chins pointing at Killua’s mug.

“Right,” he says, and sips. He can’t remember what Gon even told him it was—it’s cool and sweet and it smells of lemongrass.

“I should go ready the futons,” Gon says, looking up. “Is it okay for you to sleep with Aunt Mito, Alluka? We can squeeze another futon in my room like last time, but then we won’t be able to walk anymore!”

“Sure, sure! I mean, if she’ll have me,” she adds, cheeks turning pink-ish and Killua thinks that she really is charming and everybody should worship the ground she walks on and he might be a sleep-deprived disaster brother but at least his sister is growing up to be such a lovely, articulate and considerate human being that he too can’t be _that_ bad.

“Are we going to sleep already? It’s nine,” Killua says, while Mito and Alluka share pleasantries and lemongrass juice or whatever.

Gon smiles.

“Oh, well, the beach can be tiring! And you travelled all this way here, so…”

Killua looks at him dead in the eyes. Gon’s smile cracks.

“Or we can do something else before we get to sleep! What about a game of cards, everyone?”

Mito comes in, deck already in hand.

“As long as it isn’t Scopa. Grandma is invincible at that one.”

“It’s because I trust the cards,” she says, sounding eerie and a bit nuts, which makes Gon's expression grow extremely fond. Killua’s insides melt, because with oceans and continents between them, sometimes he forgets how it feels to just bask in his presence.

Killua doesn’t quite catch what they’re going to play—he hasn’t even seen this kind of card before, and Gon laughs at him when he asks what the heck the big wood log should mean.

“That’s the ace of clubs, Killua! It’s the one you don’t have to keep in your hand, actually! Try to make me pick it!”

“Son of a—mug,” he says, to his own mug on the table. “You can catch Gotoh’s trick, no way I’ll ever trick you.”

Gon beams.

“You can try.”

Well, he could—the first round goes like that; Gon picks up some kind of fancy looking guy on a horse—these cards are _weird_ —and puts it down with another similar horse-riding dude. Alluka lets Nanika play and Mito makes her laugh by pondering loudly about what she should pick. Abe goes right away for the same card she snatched. Killua breathes in and sets up a whirlwind.

It’s not a matter of speed; he keeps on talking to Gon about how he can’t trick him so everything is useless while his fingers move fast outside his own control, switching the ace of clubs right before Gon’s fingers when they close on it.

His eyes get _huge_.

“You two are impossible to play with,” Mito says, and loses in the span of the next turn.

Killua looks Gon in the eyes with his straightest face and Gon—he beams, so soft and freckles sprinkled on the bridge of his nose after another day spent in the sun.

Alluka snickers and Mito hums.

In the end, Abe wins because she’s evidently psychic and none of them stood a chance.

Killua and Gon brush their teeth together because there’s just one bathroom on the top floor and the one down is for Abe and Abe’s potted plants—apparently, they get just the perfect amount of sun there.

“I was thinking about what we could do tomorrow. On the outskirts of the forest there’s a super pretty clearing full of daffodils. It’s a bit late to catch the full blooming but we should still be able—”

Killua spits inside the sink. He looks at the suds for a second before washing it away.

“You know,” he starts, voice lower. “Haunted lighthouses or not, Alluka isn’t trained but she’s not helpless. And I can take care of her anyway, so if you’d like to do something more—” He flails one hand, in a vague rendition of more exciting activities. More _Gon_ activities: he can’t be the one who ruins his fun, he’s already feeling like a dead weight with how much his eyelids are trying to prevent him from staying alert and properly engaged.

“But there’s no need, Killua!” Gon says, and of course he does. “I’m fine doing whatever and it’s not bad to take things easy once in a while, don’t you think?”

Here it is, again—there’s something, a slight quiver in his voice, the tiniest hint of omission; something doesn’t add up, but what is it? Does Gon think Killua doesn’t want to adventure with him because he doesn’t have his nen anymore? Is it all just paranoid activity inside Killua’s brain or is there something Gon isn’t telling him and Alluka isn’t telling him and even Mito—hell, even Abe seems to be onto it, and it keeps him on edge because what if he did something wrong but no one wants to tell him because they don’t want to hurt his feelings or whatever? But how can he fix it if he doesn’t know what he did wrong and stop himself from doing it again and—is this a mind game? Like, an Illumi kind of mindgame, with a right answer that isn’t the true answer but still the answer that will make stuff go smoother and maybe slightly less painful—

And of course it’s not an Illumi-anything, because Illumi isn’t here, but Gon is, and Gon deserves the best version of himself Killua can give him. It’s just a bit of insomnia, how can he come here and be such a dead weight after so many months of being an awful long-distance friend…

Gon is smiling behind a towel. He smells fresh and of toothpaste.

“Let’s go to sleep, Killua,” he says, so impossibly reassuring, like he somehow sensed the rumbling tangle growing inside Killua’s head. Maybe Alluka was onto something with this vacation thing; Killua might sleep tonight, surrounded but all these clean things, his futon crisp and soft, and every catastrophic thought kept at bay by Gon’s affection.

“No, wait, sleep on the bed! I—”

“We’re too big to sleep in the same bed, Gon,” Killua says, already parked on the futon. Yeah, he could fall asleep then and there… What were they talking about? Right, lighthouses. That’s interesting, right? That’s interesting and adventurous enough, Killua can stay concentrated on that.

“So, is that old place haunted or not?”

Gon was protesting something about beds’ arrangement, but he ends up sitting on the mattress. He folds his legs, thoughtful, and grabs at his ankles.

“I don’t think so. I went there sometimes when I was a kid, climbed all the way up to the lantern room, but there was nothing there. I—” he shifts and Killua opens one eye he didn’t know he had closed. “I really think we should try and do more relaxing stuff.”

Killua nods, head already sinking, mind falling below layers of cotton.

He springs up and the light is out. Gon’s body is lying on the bed, still, and Killua knows that the stomps he’s hearing are coming from his own chest.

He fell asleep—the wind is quiet tonight but the ocean is always loud, scratching at the coast with mellow fingers.

Getting up is a need, but Killua’s most enthusiastic nighttime friend is in his same time-zone for once—and in the same room and… He extends his en on habit, to touch Alluka’s sleeping form in the other room. That calms him down a bit.

It’s not the first time Mito finds him in their kitchen in the middle of the night; she asked only once, Killua told her he was a light sleeper, she said she was too, and she made them some kind of herbal tea that turned bright blue when the water met the filter.

So Killua steps out of the futon and into his silent gait like a worn out, comfortable pair of shoes, trying to convince himself that it’s not bad manners to wander around someone else’s house during nighttime.

He brought one of Alluka’s pocket books; this one is about time travel and cryogenic technology and Killua doesn’t hate it. The pages are old and yellow, and they rustle under his fingertips while he searches for the last chapter—

Something is blinking at his back. An entire second pulses white-hot behind his eyelids but Killua doesn’t turn, paralyzed. He unclenches his jaw and exhales. It’s far, and not threatening, but there’s something—someone?

Finger still trapped inside the pages, he climbs on the backrest of the couch to scan the darkness outside the window.

There’s a light; it flickers further away from the cliff. It walks on the sea, back and forth. Maybe a ship.

The living room turns black and Killua blends into it—he knows how, he used to come inside homes and rooms and play pretend, he didn’t exist until the killing, just to disappear again right after.

He shivers in the dark and snaps his eyes open at the next trail of light—clear now, and it isn’t flickering. It’s a pulsing trail, left and then right and again. It must be the lighthouse.

“Not haunted my ass,” Killua decides, and he’s just a little bit upset because he forgot to bookmark the page on his book.

*

Gon rubs at his eyes one more time, and yawns.

“It’s always been like this.”

“So it’s haunted.”

Gon’s shoulders fall down; he’s holding the flashlight, swinging it around every time too many flies stick to it.

“Not really. Or. I mean, it is, but just for a couple weeks during this time of the year.”

Killua is going to strangle him. Gon smiles; he extends one hand like he’s waiting for Killua to sniff him or something else a feral cat would do. Killua does feel a bit feral, but being treated like a beast isn’t exactly helping at the moment.

“The fucking creepy abandoned lighthouse is on in the middle of the night and you don’t think it’s weird?”

Gon’s face is all dark planes behind the cone of the flashlight.

“It is. But it’s been like this for years and I explored it from top to bottom without finding anything so…”

“So?”

Gon grins.

“I guess I didn’t have the motivation when I was alone… Wouldn’t you prefer to be asleep right now?”

Of all the things Killua would prefer in his life, being asleep is probably the first in line at the moment; but he’s also wide awake and they’re in the wild—as wild as a couple kilometers from Gon’s house can get—and they’re… just the two of them. Out in the night, with a creepy, haunted lighthouse casting its neat, wide beacon toward the sea, searching in between the water.

“Let’s go find some ghosts, okay?” Killua says, and Gon’s grin widens.

**Author's Note:**

> I like to think that none of my hxh fics would have a plot if Killua just decided to start sleeping like a responsible person XD  
> Anyway, stay tuned (?) for another two chapters of lighthouses shenanigans and Abe Freecs being the MVP.
> 
> You can try to say hi on [tumblr](https://dodici12.tumblr.com/), if you don't mind me answering from the wrong timezone.


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